MEETING  SONNY BARGER

(this was written for The Times in 2002, but in the end didn’t appear.

Anything I write about Hell’s Angels seems to be jinxed, thru no fault of mine!)

The entrance to the London Hell’s Angels’ clubhouse, in East London, is deliberately forbidding. The metal nameplate is decorated with a full-on skull, and the echo of the massive door knocker might well be heard across the Styx. There’s a peep hole, which they use every time; presumably the Hell’s Angels have enemies in other ‘outlaw’ fraternities, in any case, they take no chances. And today they have a VIP guest, so everything must run smoothly.  The legendary Ralph ‘Sonny’ Barger - head honcho of the USA Angels, founding father, the ‘President’, the man Hunter S. Thompson called ‘the Maximum Leader’ - is on a short European tour to promote a new book, ‘Ridin’ High, Livin’ Free.’ To Hell’s Angels worldwide this man is a hero, to straight society a violent ex-convict. All his adult life Barger has been respected and feared in equal proportions.

The contrast between the exterior and the interior of the clubhouse is a fitting symbol for the way the Hell’s Angels have changed - very subtly - since the days when the young Sonny Barger raised hell, fought, spent a total of thirteen years in prison (usually narcotics and firearms charges)  and snorted enough cocaine to decorate a Winter Wonderland set. I’m sitting waiting for him in a spacious, immaculate leisure/ meeting area which leads on to a decked patio complete with green sunshades and planters tumbling pink and white flowers. On the walls are Hell’s Angel memorabilia, beautifully framed. A spiral staircase leads past a magnificent back lit stained glass panel, showing the winged death’s head which is the club’s precious logo, down to the huge bar area containing the kind of furniture you’d find in any chic little West London venue patronised by models and advertising executives. There’s chardonnay and champagne in the fridge. There’s only one word for this: civilised.

What’s more, I’m shown around by Hell’s Angel Andy , who is the highly intelligent and articulate security manager for a large, well-known company. Andy was one of the leaders of the bikers who (with his beautiful wife riding pillion) roared down the Mall during the Queen’s Jubilee Parade, to the evident delight of Prince William - and the great pride of the ‘brothers’ in the club.  There’s a new sophistication about the Angels. Before he died in a bike accident two years ago journalist-Angel and PhD Maz Harris, was one of those who were most keen to bridge the gap between the Hell’s Angels and the public - notably through the annual Bulldog Bash bikerfest, organised by the Angels with zero crime. But how does all this new PR square with the bad guy image?

Sonny Barger’s reputation precedes him. In 1968, for example, a bunch of renegades were foolish enough to steal his Harley, and when the club rounded them up they were beaten until they cried for mercy, then had their fingers broken with hammers. The man himself is smaller than you expect, but with arms well-tuned from working out.  He has the presence of somebody used to attention, and when he speaks attention is required, since his voice nowadays is a quiet rasp. In 1982, after thirty years of smoking three packs a day of filter less Camels, Barger discovered he had  throat cancer. He survived the laryngectomy, and then a heart attack eight year ago, but lives with a blocked artery and talks through a valve in his throat. With unaffected sincerity Barger smiles, ‘The best thing that ever happened to me is - I woke up this morning.’

Two years ago Barger co-wrote his autobiography with the writing twins, Kent and Keith Zimmerman, who did the same job for Johnny Rotten. That volume, ‘Hell’s Angel’ gave a unique insight into the formation and ethos of the club, including an account of the infamous incident at Altamont in 1969, in which neither the Angels nor the Rolling Stones appear as anything other than obnoxious. The new book is a collection of personal tales from the motorcycling fraternity, including non-Angels and women - because the writing team wanted to produce a book which might go some way to explain the motorcycling mystique to the general reader.

The fact that the book is likely to confirm the prejudices  of those who detest bikers doesn’t bother Barger. We agree on the truth of the sticker I have on my own motorcycle helmet: ‘If I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand.’ Barger says, ‘I don’t know if you’ve taken acid but it’s like trying to explain how it  feels - like those movie where they do swirly shots?’ I admit I haven’t, but know what he means about the buzz of being on a motorcycle. Barger still rides 30 - 40,000 miles a year, and describes a recent ride from Sedona to Flagstaff, Arizona with a fareaway look of pure pleasure: ‘...about forty of us riding out, doing 110....and the women love the speed.’

Sonny Barger was perfect ‘outlaw’ material: deserted by his mother at four months, brought up by his alcoholic teamster father, dragged through school, signing up for the army while still underage, always anti-athority, always in trouble. Growing up in East Oakland made him hard -  a ‘street tough’, who identified with the character played by Lee Marvin in ’The Wild One’. He was nine years old at the time of  the notorious 1947 Hollister fracas which was the basis for that movie, and it was just eight years later that he joined his first bike club. At this time Barger was beginning to evolve what would become the Hell’s Angels mind set: ‘I needed a close-knit club of men who could jump on their bikes..and not abide by the rules of clocks. I needed a second family.’

It simply isn’t interesting to dismiss all Hell’s Angels as violent drug-dealing murderers and rapists, although  they certainly didn’t get their reputation from singing in church choirs, and the hopped-up Hunter S.Thompson take on the  Angels obviously contains some truth. Sonny Barger’s life is inextricably entwined with the history of his club, and the key to both is the camaraderie of the military. The Hell’s Angels (and Satan’s Slaves, Road Rats and the rest) derive their history and ethos from a military past.

The term ‘Hell’s Angels’ was first used by a squadron in WW1; from then on bomber units  and divisions of solders  thought up cool names to indicate their toughness. In addition, motorcycles played an important role in both wars. Then after World War 11, the brotherhood of military life was missed by the young men who returned with a swashbuckling taste for danger, ‘unafraid to ride full-throttle and kick ass’, as Barger puts it. The ground was ready for the Hell’s Angels. The (copyright) winged Death’s Head that appears on the back of every Angel jacket  can be traced back to similar insignias on the 85th fighter squadron and  the 552nd medium bomber squadron. Those men flew into the likelihood of death each time they pulled back the joystick and rose into the equipoise between heaven and hell. Their pose was rough and  tough; their swaggering mateship the means to keep terror at bay.

Similarly,Hell’s Angels see themselves as an elite: the epitome of toughness,  masculinity, freedom - the image of the frontiersman or anti-hero. This idea is deep within the American psyche. Sonny Barger’s autobiography  explains how the biker finds identity through the club and through the Harley: ‘motorcycles are the  be-all, end-all of what this club is all about’. At 100mph-plus, with nothing between the rider and the road surface, a patch of wet might mean instant oblivion, and there is transcendence in the danger. The fact that the Angel must (according to the rules) ride out together means the danger is often shared. That ethos of brotherhood annihilates alienation. Wearing the patch, the colours, necessitates acceptance of a system as strict as any Masonic lodge, with the same guarantees of support.

Barger explains that now, with more and more people riding motorcycles, the Hells’ Angels are becoming more accepted than before. ‘People fear what they don’t know. As for the bad guy image - well, we’re only bad if you force us to be. Everything I’ve done I did because I had to. Some people’d say that instead of rounding up those guys who stole my bike I should’ve gone to the police. If I had they’d have laughed in my face, and I wouldn’t have got my motorcycle back. I did what I had to do.’

He explains the old mistrust between the Angels and straight society as a two-way street: a mutual pushing away into dislike and distrust. Now he sees the taking part in the Queen’s Jubilee as symbolic of the shift:  ‘I thought it was pretty nice’. But it doesn’t mean the Angels are pussycats: ‘Just because we do some of the things other people do, doesn’t stop us being us.’  Angel Andy adds that their club is the hardest to join in the world. The fact is that even if an accepted outsider asks one question too many the clamming up is perfectly affable, but immediate.

Sonny Barger sums up his 46 years with the club neatly. In the late fifties they formed ‘to party and ride’. Then in the sixties they started mixing with trouble, in the seventies were into crime, in the eighties doing time, in the nineties getting out of prison and settling down, and after 2000 they are having fun again.  And Barger seems to be revelling in his new status as Grand Old Man, ‘branded’ by his lawyer Fritz Clapp, with the writing talent of the Zinnermans. ‘Ridin’ High, Livin’ Free’ is book number two. After it will come a co-written biker-thriller called ‘Death in 5 Heartbeats’, the tale of a Barger- type outlaw called Patch Kincaid and his club ‘The Infidelz.’ Then a volume, probably called ‘Freedom’, containing Sonny’s pithy rules for existence - to be sold in the self-help area of bookshops.

The mind boggles. At the same time the Sonny Barger website will sell you the range of hot sauces (the ‘Hellfire’ line), a ‘signature’ electric guitar, tee-shirts, hats, pins, stickers and wallets, a motorcycle accessory kit, and ‘Sonny’s Beer’ - strong or ‘lean’. A ‘signature’ motorcycle is in development, as is the movie of ‘Hell’s Angel’, with Fritz Clapp as producer. Barger is laconic about becoming an icon - who is also a commercial ‘property.’ What matters most to him is,  ‘Now, because of the books I get paid to ride my motorcycle.’  The signings and public appearances are endless, and his energy seems undiminished despite the fact that he can’t jog anymore and his doctor wonders why he is still here.

Berger doesn’t believe in God, only in fate - and that you will die when it is the right moment. When his time comes he would like to be buried in the military cemetery in Phoenix, because there’s no grass, ‘only dirt’ - and he loves the desert. As the London rain rattles against the clubhouse windows, far from his beloved Arizona, we talk of the War against Terror. The opinion of the man who became a GI at sixteen because there was nothing else for him, and who once wrote to President Johnson volunteering Angels to fight in Vietnam,  is exactly what I expected. There’s nothing soft about this national monument. ‘What happened in our country a year ago - we can’t let that go. When people do something to you, you have to hit them so hard they’ll never ever do it again. You have to retaliate. You have to hurt them. It’s like when those guys stole my motorcycle all those years ago.’

(Hell’s Angel’ and ‘Ridin’High, Livin’Free’ are both published by Fourth Estate.)